Alien: Covenant (2/5 Stars)

In what is becoming an “Alien” franchise tradition, a subsequent installment cannibalizes a superior predecessor. I don’t mean that the sequel is inferior or simply does the same thing in an inferior way, I mean that is actually undercuts the pleasure of watching a previous movie. This happened the first time in Alien 3, when in between “Aliens” and “Alien 3” the movie actually killed off important characters that the viewer had come to know and very much like. “Alien: Covenant” does the same thing, killing off the main female lead of “Prometheus,” Elizabeth Shaw, played by Noomi Rapace. The ironic thing about the “Alien” franchises is that one of its major themes is corporate disregard for human life in the face of profit, and the main culprit of these in-between movie killings is most likely the waning stardom of previous main characters. At least that is what seems to be the main impetus behind the lack of Noomi Rapace here. In 2012 came out, Noomi Rapace, coming off the iconic “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” trilogy, was a the zenith of her star power. In 2017 she has become largely absent whereas Michael Fassbender, the other survivor from “Prometheus,” is still around. So “Alien: Covenant” kills off Noomi Rapace even before the movie starts and became the Michael Fassbender show. It is notable that this is the first canonical Alien installment that does not feature a strong female lead.

The problems start there and keep going. I am going to limit myself to just a few complaints, but not before noting that this movie was directed by Ridley Scott who directed both the original “Alien” and “Prometheus.” I merely point this out to state that he should know how to make a better movie than this one.

A large problem with blockbusters nowadays is that they use digital effects too much. Digital effects have their place, and that is when the filmmakers cannot make the thing they want to show without digital effects, like say a large crowd, or a landscape, or another world. When digital effects are used to make something really small and close, they should not be used at all. The filmmakers should just make the thing they want to be represented. Compare the baby-alien chest bursting scenes in the original 1979 “Alien” and the one this year in “Alien: Covenant.” Even though a span of thirty-eight years of continual special effects evolution has occurred, the 1979 version is more believable, more visceral, and more effective. It’s that way because they made a puppet out of real material and performed the operation physically. The same scene in “Alien: Covenant” looks like a digital recreation. It’s detailed but the audience can tell the difference. There is no financial reason to do it this way. In fact, a puppet is probably cheaper.

This movie breaks all the rules of the Alien. For it to be a believable story, the rules having been set down explicitly need to stay there. Here is a short list of broken rules in “Alien: Covenant.” One: Aliens can be killed by bullets from guns. Two: The Alien gestates in the stomach and bursts through the chest (as opposed to say, through the upper back vertebrae, which is novel but doesn’t make any sense). Three: The Alien needs time (maybe a couple of weeks) to impregnate the host, grow inside it, burst out of it, go into the wilderness and come back fully formed. In this movie, that whole process happens in a couple of hours.

Mr. Scott perhaps broke these rules because he felt the audience may have been impatient. Well, the first “Alien” movie was great because he took his time to establish the rules and follow them, which made them visceral and effective. If he couldn’t find a way to do it here, he should have gone back to the drawing board. After, the end product is an “Alien” movie that doesn’t have believable Aliens in it.

As far as the philosophical underpinnings of this movie, I am disappointed to relate that it did not follow through on the promises “Prometheus” made in what it was trying to accomplish here. I feel like “Prometheus” got thrown under the bus quite frankly. I’m not happy with this movie. Two Michael Fassbenders did not make it all okay.

Baywatch (4/5 Stars)

The best and longest running joke in “Baywatch” takes place over lifeguard lunch wherein the cocky new guy, Matt Brody, played by Zac Efron, is being quizzed on what it takes to be part of the Baywatch family (yes, it’s called a family by the head guy Mitch Buchanon, played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson). Matt Brody apparently thinks that being a lifeguard stays at saving beach goers from drowning. The lifeguard lists off several scenarios they encountered just the last week: a hoard of jellyfish, sand-grifters, and various criminal conspiracies. “The situations you are describing sound like scenes from an entertaining though far-fetched TV show,” remarks Brody before insisting once again that the lifeguards should probably just call the police in these situations.

What makes this joke work so well is the deadpan absolute seriousness that Dwayne Johnson brings to his character’s mission to “Protect the Bay.” This man really believes that these sorts of things, including the main plot of trying to bring down a drug kingpin, is his responsibility. It is absurd but Dwayne Johnson makes it work to the point of hilarity. This performance reminded me of the performances of the late great Leslie Nielson in the “Naked Gun” and “Airplane” franchises. The movie is crazy but “The Rock” anchors it by playing the part so straight.

The feel and tone of this movie comes from the “21 Jump Street” mold. The original TV series was, on the surface at least, a drama that took itself seriously. “Baywatch” as much as it deals in the superficial pleasures of the show (hot woman in swimsuits running in slow motion) makes fun of the TV show as well. A good gag is when Mitch Buchanan pulls out his keys to the lifeguard shack. On the key ring is a “Good Luck!!!” message from the previous “Mitch Buchanan” played by David Hasselhoff. Apparently this particular bay has been run by two separate Mitch Buchanan for the past forty years.

Some gags work better than others. I could have done without the morgue scene, but overall, like “21 Jump Street” the relationships and jokes make sense and it is fun watching these characters interact with each and go undercover in various costumes at the smallest provocation.

In one area, this movie does much better than others. There is a subplot involving a chubby nerd played by Ronnie Greenbaum who has a crush on C.J. Parker, played by Kelly Rohrback in the orginal Pamela Anderson role. Normally I don’t find the nerd chases hot girl story lines all that interesting. I never feel like the nerd really earns the hot girl. In this movie, I feel like Ronnie Greenbaum earns the hot girl, probably in the scene where he creates a diversion at a party by putting on a show-stopping dance number.

I liked this movie. The director, Seth Gordon, previously made one of my favorite documentaries named the “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters,” which can rightly be said to be the best documentary about people obsessed with the old “Donkey Kong” stand-up arcade game. I only mention it to recommend it. It’s good.

Get Out (3/5 Stars)

Perhaps you have heard this horror plot-line before: A group of white settlers/tourists/explorers head into the desert/woods/jungle where they meet indigenous rednecks/savages/headhunters that proceed to torture and kill them. It’s a staid subgenre of horror that has rightly been deemed racist because the indigenous people are represented as one dimensional villains. As far as I know, this sub-genre has always steadily produced movies, but those movies have never been mainstream, at least not in the last fifty years when it is fair to say that mainstream movies started going out of their way to not be racist.

“Get Out” is an installment to this subgenre, the twist being that it is about a black man who travels into the suburbs where he encounters a nefarious group of white liberal elitists. Also unlike the rest of the subgenre this movie is mainstream, written and directed by Jordan Peele, and hitting No. 1 at the box office. That essentially makes it is the most blatantly racist mainstream movie I have ever seen in a movie theater.

Obviously as a person who has seen many old movies, I have seen more racist movies than “Get Out.” The most obvious is “The Birth of a Nation.” That movie is enlightening in the sense that it gets one into the mind of a true racist, D.W. Griffith. You can’t learn anything about black people in that movie. You can however learn quite a bit about the insecurities and fears underpinning the racist ideology of the white people. The same can be said inversely about “Get Out.” You won’t be able to learn anything about white people from this movie. The characterizations are absurd and contradict themselves. You can however get a really good glimpse into the insecurities and fears of writer/director Jordan Peele, and maybe judging by the popularity of the movie (“The Birth of a Nation” too was very popular) the insecurities and fears of the modern black person. Like the insecurities and fears of D.W. Griffith, its a rather pathetic portrait and like “Birth of a Nation”, “Get Out” should go down in history as a pitiful document of its times.

Spoilers abound here: The movie concerns Chris Washington (played by Daniel Kaluuya) who is traveling to the countryside with his white girlfriend Rose Armitage (played by Allison Williams) to meet her parents for the first time. Unbeknownst to Chris, Rose has dated black men before, about ten of them in fact. She chooses them for their physical prowess, seduces them, and takes them into her family’s mansion in the woods where her family brainwashes them and sells them as slaves to the highest bidder. This bidder, a frail physically inept white person, through elaborate brain surgery, comes to inhabit the body of the physically adept black man. The black man stays in the neighborhood but his “blackness” has essentially been removed. He wears slacks and fedoras and speaks in a calm eerily comfortable tone with no slang at all, just like a white person. (This particular character, a disappeared black man from Brooklyn who has been ‘turned white’ by the evil suburb may stand in for such disappeared black men like Ben Carson. I suspect black people may feel that such people are brainwashed tools that aren’t really black anymore.)

There is a lot of psychology to unpack here already but what is most striking about this movie is its caricature of the nefarious white people. They are actually really nice. They vote Obama and go out of their way to be polite to Chris. They are obviously meant to be stand-ins for the polite white people of the real world who are aware of racism and make an effort to be tolerant. We already knew that angry violent racists are bad people, but this movie goes further: All white people are bad and have conspiratorial motives against black people no matter how nice they seem on the surface. I expect Jordan Peele, a mixed-race college graduate with a successful television and movie career, has met a lot of nice white people in his life. Like a total asshole, he is essentially stating here that he does not trust them and holds them in contempt.

It really saddens me when people make the argument that this movie is important because it shows how black people feel. Feeling something does not make it right. Tribalism is a natural thing and may feel correct, but that does not mean that racism is justified. This movie does not make the argument that “racism is bad,” it makes the argument that “white people are bad.” There is a distinction here that is sadly lost on many people who ascribe to the identity politics of our day. In their view, black people can’t be racist because one needs to have a position of power in order to effectuate racism, and black people do not have power. (Obviously, I hold a different view as to what racism entails and whether black people have enough power to be responsible for their actions.) Through that view, this movie can be justified as some little ‘payback’ for all the racism in the past. Enjoy yourself in your revenge, Jordan Peele, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that this sort of shit helps solve the problem.